HKS in the News July 23, 2012

3. Catholic Academy of Sussex County reinvents school district (Healey) NJ.com

There’s Still Hope for the Planet

The New York Times

July 22

Quoted: Robert Stavins, Belfer Center

Topic: Climate change

You don’t have to be a climate scientist these days to know that the climate has problems. You just have to step outside.

The United States is now enduring its warmest year on record, and the 13 warmest years for the entire planet have all occurred since 1998, according to data that stretches back to 1880. No one day’s weather can be tied to global warming, of course, but more than a decade’s worth of changing weather surely can be, scientists say. Meanwhile, the country often seems to be moving further away from doing something about climate change, with the issue having all but fallen out of the national debate. …

Still, the clean-energy push has been successful enough to leave many climate advocates believing it is the single best hope for preventing even hotter summers, more droughts and bigger brush fires. “Carbon pricing is going to have an uphill climb in the U.S. for the foreseeable future,” says Robert N. Stavins, a Harvard economist who is a leading advocate for such pricing, “so it does make sense to think about other things.” …

Predicting a presidential candidate’s choice of running mate is a risky business. It is one of the few campaign decisions that is made solely by the candidate himself — often to the surprise, delight or horror of the rest of the staff and the party. But here goes.

Mitt Romney will pick Rob Portman to be his running mate.

I have absolutely no inside information on this one. In fact, I’m a Democrat and Obama supporter, so Republican operatives don’t confide in me. So why am I so sure about this? Because the vice presidency has changed in ways that point to the senator from Ohio.

For most of our history, vice presidents were chosen to “balance” the ticket. The balance could be geographic; in 1960 a New Englander, John F. Kennedy, picked a Southerner, Lyndon B. Johnson. Or it could be ideological; in 1996 Sen. Bob Dole chose Rep. Jack Kemp in order to court the newly powerful supply-siders in the Republican Party. …

Without a single campus, faculty or student body to its name, the 3-year-old partnership of Catholic schools that’s flourishing in northwestern New Jersey can hardly be considered an “academy.” But even if it’s more virtual than physical, the Catholic Academy of Sussex County is having a huge impact on the governance and administration of education in that corner of the state, and could well serve as a model for other parochial school systems that face extinction.

Like many Catholic school districts, the one in Sussex County found itself in trouble. Two of its four elementary schools were in danger of closing, victims of declining enrollment and imploding finances. The bright light in this picture was Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, but even its administrators were alarmed at the diminishing enrollment of feeder schools. …